Panhandle Farewell
by Sevenstars
Summary: What passed between Jess and hs surviving siblings when he set off in search of Frank Bannister.


**Panhandle Farewell**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: 15-year-old Jess Harper knows—or thinks he knows—what he has to do. But how can he leave his siblings—Francie and Johnny, his only surviving family—in someone else's care? Thanks to Katy for beta chores.

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_From the point where the Pecos River flowed into the Rio Grande, and for 150 miles west of it and 225 east, northward across the Edwards Plateau, then narrowing as they swept past the edge of the north-central "rolling plains," the Great Plains of Texas stretched. From a point between 200 and 250 miles south of the state line it was known as the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains, because, so it was said, the early Spanish conquistadores, probing outward in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, Gran Quivira, and other legendary civilizations, had found its treeless flatness so disorienting that they'd driven stakes into it as they went, to mark their trail home, as men in the eastern woods might blaze trees. This was the true Panhandle of Texas._

_It was a treeless plain (except along the rivers), where the winds blew strong and steady and the blizzards, in season, roared down from the Pole with nothing to break their force. The sky was bright and blue and clear under a blazing hot sun. There were crashing thunderstorms, with great bolts of lightning. And sometimes heat lightning tore the sky at night, even when there was no storm. At its southeast corner, where the Red River flowed into the Indian Territory, it stood more than 1500 feet above sea level; in the northwest, where it rubbed elbows with both New Mexico and the Cimarron Strip, over 4700—nearly as high as Denver. The land was rich, though, despite its featurelessness, and the buffalo grass grew thick, curing on the stem and providing matchless grazing not only for the buffalo and antelope that were native there but for the mule deer and white-tailed deer that sometimes drifted in, and the cattle—the longhorns—that had been introduced by the white man._

_It was Indian country, anciently the ranging grounds of the Comanche and Kiowa and Eastern Apache, but Texans cared little for that. They took pride in the fact that Mexico, almost forty years ago, had first begun to encourage Anglo settlement of the then-province because it was recognized everywhere that Americans were better Indian fighters than Mexicans were. And so they had proved to be, pushing the Indians gradually westward away from the piney woods and the coast, establishing at an early date militias—later known as "ranging companies," and eventually as Rangers—to pursue and punish raiders (white, red, and brown) as the hierarchical, regulation-bound U.S. Army couldn't. And because Texas, under the terms of the annexation treaty by which she had entered the Union, retained full control of all her lands, the Federal government had nothing to say about it if Texans chose to filter out from their early settlements and encroach on what would, elsewhere, have been called "Indian land" until the red man's title to it had been extinguished by treaty._

_His uncle, Cameron Cooper, who was an educated man as well as a Texas Ranger, had told him that Texas had been the first place where Americans, with their towns and cattle and crops, had ever run up against wide-ranging, warlike horse Indians. Everywhere past the creeping line of the frontier, marked by its string of little forts and shifting every ten years or so—and in many cases miles inward from it as well—every farm, every ranch, had to be, as in Sioux country farther north, built like a small fort. If it wasn't, it sooner or later became a burned-out ruin haunted by the ghosts of whites who had died there, some of them horribly._

_There were no forts this far north, nothing past Ford Chadbourne about fifteen miles above the Colorado—but there were towns, two of them, Amarillo and Tascosa. Barely thirty miles apart, but lying on opposite sides of the Colorado River, the latter was the capitol of the northern section of the Panhandle, the former of the southern. And southeast of that in turn, almost seventy-five miles—between two and a half and four days by single wagon, depending on the weather, the load, and the condition of one's team—lay the headquarters of the fittingly named Wind Vane Ranch, 300,000 acres of fenceless range straddling the Pease River Valley and spreading more than twenty miles along it east and west. Begun fifteen years ago with a thousand two-year-old heifers and their calves, seventy young bulls, fifty or sixty cowponies, and three stallions and their mares, 18,000 cattle and almost 900 horses, including a working remuda of 360, now bore its simple four-pronged brand, and it was by no means the biggest ranch in that vast tract. Last year it had driven almost 1850 head—more than half of a good-sized trail herd—to market._

_The core of the headquarters were the foreman's house, the bunkhouse and cookhouse/dining hall, and the "ranchhouse," the building where the owner and his family stayed when they were there, which was generally only twice a year, at roundup seasons, since their main home was on the Brazos, some 150 miles away as the buzzard flew (and he often did, in that country). They were arranged in such a way that men in each one could help cover the others, and in that timberless environment were built either of adobe or of sod bricks lined with stone, the latter of which, especially, had the advantage not only of being impervious to arrows and bullets, but of being cool in summer, warm in winter, and able to stand up to tornadoes, prairie fires, and blue northers with a shrug. They stood out on a little knoll, above the barns and corrals, so that the defenders could at least try to cover those as well._

_Sam Harper, foreman these fifteen years—ever since the place was first established—lived in his own commodious house with his six youngest children; his two oldest boys had set off to seek their fortunes almost a decade before, and his eldest girl had gotten married and moved to New Mexico two years ago. His wife had lain buried some thousand feet from the building since her death late last winter. The house was actually a perfect square—thirty-three and a half feet a-side—but it looked rectangular, perhaps because of the shady gallery, draped with vines loaded in season with wild mustang grapes, that ran all down the west side of it, baffling the strong afternoon sun, and the off-centered roof-peak at each end, pierced by a single window that provided light to the storage attic just under the sloping tin roof (equally as resistant to fire arrows as sod would have been, and much less likely to leak). Inside the walls, a frame of lumber, freighted in from mills in the piney-woods country 400 miles away, supported the attic floor, the roof, and the partitions that divided the four rooms one from another, and a stout board floor, pierced by two trap doors, let into a large cellar in which food sufficient for a year could be stored—and from which, in case of need, a narrow timbered escape tunnel led a good quarter mile down to the river, emerging as a hole scarcely larger than a badger's on the far side of an enormous rock. There was only one door, since a door is the most vulnerable point of any building; it opened into the kitchen from the gallery, and was flanked on either side by a window to allow a tight defense of it. Another window from the "sitting room," where the family relaxed in the evenings and on bitter winter days and entertained what little company it ever saw, also looked out on the gallery, and each of the other walls had two windows, which provided not only a good field of defensive fire but pleasant cross-ventilation in warm weather. Each window was equipped inside with heavy oaken battle shutters, laced with iron strapping and equipped with bolts, which could be folded quickly across at an alarm and were punctuated, like the walls, with firing ports for rifles. The walls enclosed a well with a pump, which had been dug before the walls were raised and ensured defenders of all the water they needed in case of a siege, although horse Indians generally were little inclined toward that tactic. Crossbars were laced across the chimney inside to prevent invaders from getting in that way._

_The kitchen was set on the northwest corner so it could provide its own heat in winter; here the family ate, at a sawbuck dining table set about with handmade arrowback chairs whose splints narrowed from "tongue-depressor" to "spindle" where they joined the top rail, and here too the youngest children did their lessons in winter, their mother having come from a good family back in Cherokee County and being resolved that they should all learn to read and sign their names, if nothing more. The main room, usually called the "sittin' room" (never the "parlor"), opened off it to the south, with the fireplace on the inside wall so as not to waste heat in the bitter winter months, and the stovepipe was vented out through its chimney. On the east side were two bedrooms, one for the boys—Jess, Johnny, Billy, and Davy—and one for the two remaining girls, Francie and little Julie; Sam still slept in a corner of the main room, in the spool-turned, grained-painted bed he had shared with his Amanda. There wasn't much furniture, for Sam came of a poor clan and worked "on shares," taking his pay as a percentage of the profits once a year when the cattle were sold, the crew paid off and the store bills in Amarillo settled; most of what existed was either homemade or the Cottage, or "painted," furniture that factories, primarily in New England, had been producing and shipping all over the country since about 1850, and that was used primarily in bedrooms as a light and inexpensive alternative to the substantial style of the public rooms, but also by poorer people throughout the house. Holding pride of place near the fireplace was the Boston rocker—one of the first of that breed—that had been bought for Amanda, as part of her dowry, when she was only five, and had sat in her bedroom until she eloped and made Sam take it along: a spindle-backed rocking chair with cyma-curved arms and seat, stencilled with gilt and colored designs, not black like most, but red-painted, with separate green seat and back cushions and a white antimacassar with rose embroidery. The other chairs were homemade, ladderbacked or covered in cowhide, and the youngest kids often sprawled on the floor, where a big red-and-brown oval rag rug, made by Amanda, and a grizzly bearskin, shot by Sam, cushioned young bones. Yet there were some few touches of comfort—a square mirror over the fireplace, inexpensive Prang chromos in simple homemade scrap-wood frames, curtains of calico (which cost as little as a nickel a yard) and muslin (twice that), some butterflies pinned to cards, the porcelain figures of a monkey orchestra (a twelfth-birthday present to Amanda from her grandmother, and her dearest possession after the rocker), an inexpensive French-porcelain statue—just under a foot high—of George Washington standing on the British flag with the Eagle perched beside him surveying the broken arms of England, a little key-wound music box, one porcelain "elegancy"—a kind of decorative vase with painted designs, encrusted figures, fancy petal-like mouths, and interesting shapes, popular throughout the '50's—which Sam had bought his wife as a twentieth-anniversary present and brought proudly (and carefully) home in the chuck wagon when he returned from New Orleans. And a crude wood bookcase tucked alongside the fireplace, holding the Harper family library—the Bible, a set of readers, a speaker, and a rhetoric, Parson Weems's life of Washington, Plutarch, Aesop, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, The Arabian Nights, the poetry of Byron and Scott and the latest unitary edition of Longfellow, Pierce Egan's Robin Hood and Little John; or The Merry Men of Sherwood Forest, a history of Texas, a complete Shakespeare, and a row of cheaply-bound paperbacked "blood-and-thunders," among them the supposed adventures of Dixie Howard, the "gentleman gunfighter-gambler," which cost only twelve and a half to thirty-one cents each._

_Wind Vane was of necessity a self-sufficient place. Supplies were freighted in once a month in good weather, not at all in bad—around November came a last delivery that had to hold the place till spring; the Harpers got to Amarillo about twice a year, usually spring and fall, although visits were exchanged more often with neighboring ranchers, especially in winter, when snow-covered ground made travel easier and the Indians were tucked cozily away in their camps till April or so. Doctors just weren't available: if someone was injured or came down with sickness, or a baby was due, the ranch folk handled the situation themselves as best they could, with occasionally some help from a neighbor. Schools the same: the young Harpers gained their meager education through the efforts of their insistent mother. Amusement was family-made, varied by a dance and barbecue thrown at the slightest excuse by any rancher in 200 miles or so. Game, from jackrabbit to buffalo, was on the table almost more often than beef or pork, along with snipe, Canada goose, and assorted ducks in winter, specklebellies passing over spring and fall, mudhens in summer, mourning dove, scaled quail, and prairie chicken all year round; bass, catfish, and sunfish from the river and the sloughs supplemented these. Cook and foreman alike kept truck patches, chickens, and pigs, as did the Mexican staff families from whose ranks came most of the year-round crew (since they worked more cheaply than Anglos), and to the north of the Harper house, where the prevailing winds would blow the flies and odors away from it, was a little sod-and-rock barn where two cows and the "personal ponies" of Sam and his sons lived. A professional blacksmith had his shop near the barn, and a pair of Mexicans, brothers, highly skilled men, kept the barn and tack room, made sheepskin coats, could produce anything that was wanted in the way of furniture, and with little more than a rough workbench and an assortment of knives, chisels, and clamps created splendid fiesta saddles and sturdy workaday rigs. Sam's segundo, Holt Maylock, had lived in an adobe about halfway between the bunkhouse and the staff houses until his Mexican wife died and he'd sent his daughter Avonia off to school in Dallas and moved into the "foreman's room" off the crew's quarters; it had already been agreed that when Avonia came home for the summer she'd stay with the Harpers, Jess particularly having been her playmate and friend all her life. Throughout the heavy-work season, spring through fall, eighty cowhands worked the place, most of them changing off at line camps scattered about the range, generally sturdy dugouts that could be easily defended if a raiding party happened by; there were never less than two men at each camp, and they changed every week, so that if by mischance a camp was overwhelmed, its fate would be found out before the stock in its part of the spread had time to scatter to the four winds or be run off by the victorious redskins._

_In the Panhandle country you grew up fast, and he'd been doing a man's work for pay, now, for three years, ever since he turned twelve; packing a sidearm too, even if it was only a Navy .36—it was still his, bought with his own earned wages. He'd been a green hand the first couple of those years, but now he was recognized as a full cowhand, and Pa had said that when the drive made up for this season he could ride flank instead of drag. Being a full cowhand, of course, meant that he had to take his turn at line-camp work, but the foreman's house was still his home, and that was where he stayed when he was headquartering at the ranch. He'd been watching eagerly for the painted tin roofs, vivid blue as the Panhandle sky against the soft hues of the buffalo grass, and now as they came in sight he lifted his pony from jog-trot to lope, thinking already of Pa's welcoming handshake, the eager embraces of the littl'uns, Johnny's eyes shining in admiration of his big brother, the good feed he knew Francie would put on for him..._

_...and then he saw the flames shooting from the windows..._

_...and suddenly Francie and Johnny were there, coughing, faces smeared with ash and smoke, and Francie was dragging at his arm, holding him back as he struggled to free himself and get Julie and the little boys out..._

"_No, no, lemme go... Francie... I gotta... don't... no, no, NO!... Francie, no—I—we can't let 'em... Francie, please!"_

_NOOOOOOO..._

He woke with a violent start, breath exploding out of him in a sobbing gasp. Beside him on the prairie-hay-stuffed mattress, Johnny mumbled and squirmed, disturbed by his big brother's movements. He breathed in, shudderingly, refilling his lungs with the clean late-spring smells of grass and dew and the lingering spicery of fires controlled on hearths and in stoves, as fires should be, and shivered, not entirely from the cool night air. He pushed back the Wandering Foot quilt and slipped carefully off the mattress so as not to wake his brother, stood and padded silently in his bare feet to the steps of the back porch/summer kitchen of the Brady house, and sank down, elbows on knees, head in hands. This time, apparently, he hadn't yelled, the way he had a dozen times or more on roundup, even tired as he'd been after pushing himself to do the work of two; at least Johnny hadn't waked up, and Mrs. Brady didn't seem to be coming out to check on him, not that there was any reason for her to; she knew why he hollered, and she knew as well as he did that there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Well, one thing, maybe.

If he took Bannister down, if he settled the score for his family... maybe then he could sleep again.

"I know what I promised, Pa," he whispered. "But you was the one told me to watch out for my brothers and sisters, and Francie and Johnny is all I got left of either, far's we know, except for Sophie, and she's married and startin' a family of her own." They'd had a letter, just a few days before the raid: Sophie's wishes for a happy fifteenth birthday for him, news of her little boy Hank who was walking now, of Jim's hopes for the roundup. Ben and Jake hadn't written in... must be six, seven years now. "I ain't forgot what them Bannisters done to us... I won't never forget it, you know that. But they're all I got of home now... how can I leave 'em? I ain't like the big boys, born on the road..." He swiped half angrily at the tears leaking from his eyes. He couldn't cry, not any more. He was the man of the family now.

The Bradys' house sat on the outskirts of Amarillo, which consisted of no more than ten mercantile and service establishments, a little less than forty houses, and under 200 people. Like the Harpers, theirs was a sizeable family, six living kids up to now (and, Mrs. Brady being not yet forty, there was every chance it could get to seven). That was why—well, one reason why; nobody liked sharing a room with somebody who came up yelling at regular intervals—Jess and Johnny were sleeping on the porch: the boys' bedroom was already accomodating Milt (almost twenty), Gil (fourteen), and Neville (not quite seven), and cramming in two more was, Jess had decided, a bit more than should be asked. And of course once he made it clear that he meant to bed down outside, Johnny had insisted on joining him. Harriet, who was going on seventeen, was sharing her bed with Francie, just about the same age as herself, and ten-year-old Edith rounded out the roster in the girls' room; Augusta, who was barely two, still slept in her parents'. Mr. Brady owned the hardware store, that being one of the first special-line retail businesses to supplement the general mercantile in most towns, and sold harness, saddlery, guns, and dry goods there as well. The Bradys had been long-time friends of Jess's parents—they'd met back before Jess was even born, while Sam and Amanda were still migratory, living part-time out of a wagon and part-time wherever Sam could find work—and when the young Harpers, bereaved and destitute, were brought to town by the folks from Wagon Fork, thirty-five miles from Wind Vane and still the nearest ranch to it, they hadn't hesitated to take the threesome in.

Jess had gotten work on one of the nearer ranches; had to—there was no way he could keep his promise without a horse and a saddle, his own having been, respectively, run off by the Bannisters (along with every other head of stock on the place) and burned (along with the building it had been in, specifically their little wood-framed sod barn, and everything else above ground). Two months later, he had fifty dollars of his own, just enough to pay for a single-ear bridle, a two-ring nickel port bit, a basic saddle and a serviceable blanket to go under it. With his pay from the month before the raid, which was another twenty-five, he could buy a pair of saddlebags, two blankets, and a trail-grade cowpony. What he'd do for supplies and camp gear he wasn't sure, though he reckoned Mr. Brady and Mr. Graves at the mercantile would carry him on credit till he could send the money back; all ranch- and farm-country storekeepers did a big share of their business on tick, balancing the books once a year and usually finding little to tell either way.

Only he'd been here almost a month since roundup finished, and still he hadn't gone to either one to ask.

It wasn't that he was afraid. Harpers might not be much, from what Pa had said of them, but they weren't cowards—they never would have left Tennessee for Texas, all those years ago, otherwise. He was also a prairie boy, and if he hadn't been self-reliant, he wouldn't have lived to be eleven years old, not to mention fifteen: he'd have drowned at ten, when his horse threw him fording a river, or frozen in the blizzard that got him lost the year before that. As early as age eight he'd been hunting game for his family's table; when he was nine he could track nearly as well as the man he'd learned from, Jack Henry Milburn, Wind Vane's half-Comanche boss wrangler; at ten he'd broken his first horse—the slow Comanche way, as Jack Henry had taught him—and begun working as Milburn's first assistant. By the standards of frontier Texas, he was effectively, if not legally, a grown man. He was not only obligated to avenge his family—in a country that didn't even have county government yet, who else was there to do it, apart from the Rangers?—he had the skills for the job, or so he reckoned it.

And yet he was also the oldest Harper male left in the Panhandle country, the one to whom his surviving sister and brother had every right to turn for support and direction.

"I don't want to leave them," he said softly aloud. "I'm all they got... and they're all I got. How can I go?"

The Bradys had looked after Francie and Johnny while he was on roundup, had treated them no different from their own young'uns, so both his sibs had assured him when he came back. He knew they'd continue doing the same if he left; it was an obligation on them, of both friendship and neighborliness... just as settling scores for Pa and the littl'uns was an obligation on him.

But the trail was nigh on three months old and getting older and colder with every day that passed. Could he even find the Bannisters after so much time had passed? They'd had long enough to get to Mexico by now, or Louisiana, or Denver...

"_You can't be telling me he's actually talked about this, Vernon!"_

"_He didn't have to, Marelda. Jess knows he's the man of the family now."_

_Jess paused in the shadows outside the Bradys' dining-room window, a load of kindling in the crook of his arm, caught by the sound of his own name. He knew better than to eavesdrop, of course. But he sensed that this conversation had to do with some of the doubts and uncertainties he'd been struggling with himself, and he was far too proud to approach either of the Bradys directly. Too proud, and too unsure. If they wouldn't support him, there'd be no hope; he knew he and Francie and Johnny weren't of age yet._

"_He's only fifteen! He's just a boy!"_

"_You can't live in a boy's world when you've already suffered as a man. He knows he can support himself; he's been doing man's work these three years. He doesn't feel it's right for us to have to take on two more to feed and clothe."_

"_There's no have-to about it! Sam and Amanda were our friends. They'd have done the same for our children. And supporting himself is one thing, but what about supporting his brother and sister?"_

"_All right, then, let's think about that. He can make twenty-five dollars a month cowboying—or he could set himself up as a horsebreaker and make twice what a man does who just busts 'em three saddlings. Seven dollars a head easy, maybe as much as $12.75. Even just two horses a week, that's an easy fifty-six a month, up to more than a hundred, and he can do it year-round. There's many a day laborer feeds a large family on less, and you've seen him with horses, Marelda; you know how Milburn taught him. Francie could sew, and Johnny could pick up odd jobs around town, maybe take small game, run a trap line in winter..."_

"_And where would they live?"_

"_They'd only need three rooms at most, and in a pinch they could get by with two. If they rented a furnished house, that would be maybe $17.50 a month. Or we could get up a collection to buy them some furniture and clothes and maybe one of those new sewing machines; an unfurnished house rents for around six dollars, the size they'd need, and even a five-room one wouldn't cost more than ten, or $300 to rig out complete—why, if every outfit that shops in Amarillo kicked in a dollar a person, they'd have easy twice that, maybe more. Food and fuel for three shouldn't go over four dollars a week, that's say seventeen a month. Twenty-three to twenty-seven, that leaves at least as much again for clothes, lamp oil, feed for Jess's horse, whatever else. They could keep some chickens and a pig and have a truck patch, like their ma did, and even a cow. Maybe as they got a few dollars put by they could buy some calves and start a little herd of their own; in a few years they'd be selling the increase, twenty or thirty a year. They could do it."_

_There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Mrs. Brady said, "Vernon Erle Brady, I believe you're serious!"_

"_Never been more serious in my life, Marelda, except the day I asked you to marry me. Jess is proud, too proud to take charity or want his brother and sister to do it. He's pulled his own weight since he was twelve and done his bit for his family even longer. Why, there are fellows no more than a year older than he is driving stage or scouting for the Army or wearing law badges. You know that's true..."_

He knew, after this, that Mr. Brady was on his side and would help him establish a household for the three of them if that was what he wanted to do. And it was true, he knew he could make a good living for them as a horsebreaker, maybe do some market hunting in between times, fill in here and there at roundup if things got tight. It gave him a good feeling to know that a man who'd headed his own family for better than twenty years believed him capable of doing likewise.

He knew Francie and Johnny would be safe and well-treated with the Bradys. Any other possibility simply never entered his mind. That wasn't the question. The question was whether he had the right to expect the Bradys to take on a pair of penniless orphans as well as their own tribe.

If Sophie and Jim just hadn't taken it in their heads to move to Mesilla after they got hitched, then Francie and Johnny would have had blood kin to take care of them. Or if Ben and Jake hadn't left, all those years ago—although Jess reckoned he couldn't rightly fault them for not wanting to work somebody else's land and stock the rest of their lives. He'd had something of the same notion in mind not too long ago, himself...

_He sat at the kitchen table, shelling pecans for the cake Francie figured on making for Christmas dinner, and watched her stirring the big pot of brown chili on the stove. She had something chewing on her, he was sure. There was a look she got, not a frown exactly, just—_

"_Johnny been givin' you trouble again?" he asked casually._

_She didn't turn. "What makes you say that?"_

"_I know you, that's what," he said, and got up and went to stand just behind her. "You can't hide nothin' from me, li'l sis, you never could."_

_He saw the color come on the back of her neck and knew he'd struck home. "It ain't your fault you ain't Ma, you know," he continued._

_She turned into his arms then, and clung to him for dear life, shaking. "I feel so—so—useless! I'm as close as he's got to a ma, now, why can't he mind me?"_

" _'Cause there ain't but two folks he ever did mind, even when he was only little. Ma, and me. And he reckons he's too old to change now."_

"_He's sassin' Pa, too," she said. "Not sassin' like you and me when we were little, that unthinkin' way little kids have, but mean like. I'm scared, Jess, thinkin' how he'll be in three, four years, when he starts to get his growth..."_

"_Hey, now," he said, and untied his bandanna and dabbed at her eyes with it. "Don't start in bawlin'. It ain't that bad."_

"_Not now, maybe. But it will be."_

"_If he stays here, I reckon so," Jess agreed. "But what if he don't?"_

"_You mean what if he runs off? I wouldn't be surprised if he did, not one little bit, but how would that help him? He's not like you, Jess, he don't know the range, or carry a sixgun, or—"_

"_Ain't talkin' about that. Talkin' about him goin' with me."_

_She looked up, catching her breath. "What do you mean?"_

"_Mean maybe we could get on a drive come the spring, me and him. Go up to Colorado, to that Pike's Peak country—you know, where they found the gold in '58 and '59, like we read about in Frank Leslie's. Lots of Texas cowmen are takin' herds up there to feed the miners. Some are even talkin' about settlin' there permanent. Johnny and me, we could go down to Fort Chadbourne, then east from there till we find a herd, and get work easy—Johnny could wrangle, and I can ride flank now, Pa said so. It's close on a thousand miles, that's near three months' drivin', I'd have ninety dollars or more and Johnny sixty. Even if we had to buy horses out of the remuda, it'd be a start, and then we could get an outfit..."_

"_An outfit?" she repeated. "What kind of outfit?"_

"_Minin' outfit. Pans and picks and shovels and such, and a burro to carry 'em. See if we can get some of that gold for ourselves." He grinned at her astonished expression. "Reckon you'd be just as well pleased to have two less to be cookin' and washin' for and scrubbin' up after, huh? And if we could strike it, like lots of fellers are doin', then..." He raised his head and looked past her shoulder and out the kitchen window, his blue eyes alight with the dream. "Then we could start somethin' of our own, a ranch, a Harper ranch. And Pa could bring you and the littl'uns up, and we could build a cabin, and maybe be settled before snow. Start over in a Territory where nobody's heard of the Texas Harpers or cares about 'em."_

_She stared at him open-mouthed. "How long you been thinkin' about this?"_

"_Been kinda kickin' it around my head these last couple months." He looked down into her face again from his five inches' advantage in height. "Ben and Jake was right, you know. It ain't right we should have to spend our lives workin' somebody else's land and stock. All a man needs is one break, Francie. One good break, if he sees it for what it is and grabs it while he can—it can make all the difference. It wouldn't have to be grand. Start with a couple hundred good range heifers and five or six young bulls, then work up to maybe a thousand head—it wouldn't take but about five years. Could work 'em with say a dozen horses to start, four each for me and Pa and Johnny..."_

"_Oh, Jess!" She threw her arms around his middle and hugged him. "Jess, you're the best brother...!"_

_No I ain't, _he thought bitterly. _If I was, I'd'a' never let the littl'uns die. I'd'a' got 'em out... somehow. I'd at least 'a'thought to take a couple minutes to draw the battle shutters on the back windows so's them torches couldn't'a been pitched in..._

_Just goes to show, maybe, that dreamin' ain't worth the time it takes. That land of our own, roots of our own, ain't for Harpers, just like I've known ever since Pa told us about his kin. Best I don't think on it no more, ever again._

But, come down to it, even if Ben and Jake _had_ been here, working on another ranch, maybe, them being older, like as not they'd have reckoned it was _their_ duty to go after the Bannisters—for Pa, even if the littl'uns had lived. And Jess would have been left behind to be man of the family.

Except they weren't here, and he was. So that left it up to him—either to look after his brother and sister, or to seek revenge for his dead.

Which should he do?

It had seemed very plain to him at first, in the dreadful days right after the raid, when the numbness of shock wore off, giving way to a steady burn of rage as he began to understand, all the way through to his gut and his brain, what he had lost. He had heard stories enough—and not only from Pa and Uncle Cam—to know that a proper man, when his family was hurt, took payment for them, in blood, if he had to. Maybe, if he hadn't had to take that roundup job to earn money for at least the foundation of an outfit, he never would have had time to doubt. But in camp, struggling with the dreams, grieving quietly and alone over the welcomes he would never know again, the plain yet cozy comfort of his home, the warmth and richness of his vanished family life, he had begun to understand that it was now just the three of them, him and Francie and Johnny, against the world; that his brother and sister must be suffering just as much as he was. Could he leave them alone without his support—emotional as well as any other kind? Shouldn't they stay together, being all that was left of the Harpers? Wasn't he the head of the family now? Wasn't it his duty to take care of them?

And yet it was also his duty to settle the score with the Bannisters.

Mr. Brady thought they could make a go of it, the three of them alone. He couldn't help wondering whether any of those other Harpers, back in East Texas, would have been able to do that—would have even tried—if they'd been in this situation. He had resolved, years ago after Pa told him the story of his family, that he would never be what the rest of them were—white trash, people who would reject their own kin. _He_ had been raised differently. In the necessarily self-sufficient environment of Wind Vane and the Panhandle, the first allegiance, the first obligation, he had was to his family; they supported one another, always, no matter what. Family was—had always been—the biggest, most permanent thing in his life, an unbreakable bond. And when Ben and Jake took off and left him the oldest boy at home, it had become even more so.

He had failed once. He couldn't fail again.

But unless he knew what he should do, he _would_ fail.

_On the flat plain of the Panhandle, it was impossible for anyone to sneak up on you, except maybe by night. So all day there was a sentry on duty in a skeletal wooden tower above the stock tank, where he could see twenty miles or more in any direction, and after sundown there were dogs on guard, in case of Comanches creeping up in the dark. _

_When he saw the riders coming, the sentry had fixed on them with his spyglass. But they were white—and although there were a lot of them, still it wasn't unknown for a large group of men to travel together at this season, going from one ranch to another, looking for work. Wind Vane cut its crew down to a couple of dozen after the fall gather; it needed to hire over fifty to take it through the next few months, and any group that had come through Amarillo—or for that matter many of the communities farther east and south, most of which knew something of the Panhandle outfits—would be aware of that. So, knowing that, the sentry made no attempt to sound an alarm._

_The Harpers were just finishing their midday dinner when they heard the shots. Sam was on his feet immediately, Jess barely seconds behind him. "Pa? Is it Indians?" Francie asked._

"_No. No, Fred's on the tower; he'd have seen." It was one of the big reasons the tower had been built to begin with. Even if they had guns, which they didn't always, Indians would be just as much at a disadvantage, shooting up at the sentry (and against the brightness of the sky to boot), as anyone else would; he'd have at least those few vital minutes to give warning while they tried to get the range. "Sounds like they're hittin' at the barn, whoever they are." He slung his gunbelt around his hips, reached for his rifle, and headed for the door._

"_Pa—" Jess began._

"_Stay set," Sam told him. "I'm foreman, I'll see to this. You watch out for your brothers and sisters, boy." And before his son could protest, he was out the door._

_Jess thought quickly, something you learned to do on the range, of necessity. Gunfire meant trouble, maybe raiders of some kind, maybe after the remuda that had been brought in so the animals could be looked over and reshod before the real work of roundup began. Maybe all they reckoned on doing was running off as many as they could get before the Wind Vane crew had time to mount a defense. Uncle Cam had once said that in any engagement, the side that could hold its reserves back longest would win. That was what Jess was: his pa's reserves. He snatched his own gunbelt from its hook and darted into the boys' bedroom, which was on the southeast corner of the house, looking downslope toward the barn, shops, and corrals. Kneeling beside the south window, he could see Sam, rifle in hand, descending; could see the flurry of activity beyond as the riders leaned from their saddles to throw the gates open—and the little knot of them, four or five, heading this way._

_He saw Sam fall before the sound of the shot reached him. He didn't have to be told his father was dead; he knew._

_And the riders didn't stop. They were still coming._

"_Francie! Johnny! Get your rifles!" he hollered. "Francie, you watch the door—Johnny, take the south sittin'-room window. Billy, you get Davy and Julie under Francie's bed and keep 'em there!" If it had been Indians, he'd have sent them into the cellar. But how was he to imagine that white men, even outlaws, would willfully kill women and children?_

Still, it didn't change the facts. They had died, not only Pa, who was at least an armed man and therefore a possible threat to the attackers, but Billy and Davy and Julie. Had died because of a decision _he, _Jess Harper, his father's deputy, entrusted with their safety, had made.

A blunder. Maybe a justifiable blunder, but a blunder just the same. How could he wipe out the guilt of it, except in blood?

If he'd been asked what he was thinking, in those desperate seconds, he'd probably have said that, these being white men, it hadn't seemed that anyone not shooting at them would be in danger. And the house was solid: no bullet could get through the stone-lined sod-brick walls. The littl'uns, under the bed, well below the line of the windows, would be safe.

So he'd thought.

He hadn't known, then, that it was the Bannisters. Everyone, even here in the sparsely-populated Panhandle, had heard of them. They were as bad as Comanches—maybe worse, because Comanches didn't know any better, and whites, even outlaws, were supposed to.

It wasn't till the very last moments before Francie dragged him out, as he stared out through the drifting smoke, coughing, dizzy, his eyes watering, that he saw the leader's face and recognized it as one he'd seen on a Wanted poster last fall in Amarillo.

Frank Bannister.

Not till then did he realize just how terrible a mistake he had made.

And if he didn't, somehow, act to redeem that mistake, how could he face Pa when he saw him again?

How could he live with himself?

He was a man now, the head of his family. He had responsibilities to his dead.

And yet didn't he also, and equally, have responsibilities to the living?

How was he to choose between them?

He knew that Mr. Brady, at least, believed he could take care of Francie and Johnny, support them, make a home for them. Did he have as good a chance of taking what the Bannisters owed him?

After the news of the raid got around, three or four of the biggest ranchers had clubbed together to make up a reward, and sent word to the Rangers. A young Ranger named Parmalee—a quiet-spoken, firm-looking man who reminded Jess of Uncle Cam, but was only about half his age—had caught up with the roundup and questioned him closely about the raid, since he and Francie and Johnny were the only living witnesses to it, and Jess had answered as honestly and fully as he could, out of respect for the badge his uncle had worn, if nothing else. He'd even taken Parmalee back to what was left of the Wind Vane headquarters and stood by while the Ranger examined the ruins and what sign the weather hadn't already wiped out. He'd tried not to look at the place where his home had stood. Funny how it had never occurred to him that, while the roof and exterior walls couldn't burn, the inside framing, the floor and ceiling and partitions, could—and once they did, the roof and walls, having nothing to support them, would naturally fall in. There'd been no attempt made to recover the littl'uns' bodies, just a slab put up over the approximate location of the girls' bedroom.

He'd remembered something he'd heard somewhere: _Gravestones cheer the living; they're no use to the dead._

Couldn't the same be said of revenge? It might ease _his_ grief and guilt, but what good would it do his family?

After nearly three months, did he even have any chance of catching up with the gang? And if he did, what hope would he have of taking his due from them, at nearly twenty to one?

Maybe he should just leave the whole matter to the Rangers. They were used to this kind of thing, they'd worked out ways to get around the advantages of numbers and even time, they had sources he didn't. They'd been created just to deal with people like the Bannisters. Back in the '20's, when Anglos first began coming to Texas, most of them, rather than daring the wretched roads, came as far as they could by way of the Mississippi River, then the Red to the Louisiana Creole town of Natchitoches (whose residents called it NAK-i-tosh), jumping-off place for Texas-bound overland travellers. About 120 miles west, across the Sabine, was the ancient Spanish settlement of Nacogdoches, the easternmost town in Mexican Texas. In between lay a kind of no-man's-land, the Redlands, haunted by various hard characters who'd been run out of the colony or the States and couldn't go to either one, so they just squatted in the middle and turned their hands to mischief—smuggling, counterfeiting, horse-stealing, making bad whiskey, and preying in bloody banditry on travellers using the dim traces. The garrison of homesick Mexican soldiers stationed at Nacogdoches under Colonel José de las Piedras could do little to protect the latter (setting aside the fact that till they got over the Sabine they were still on American soil, where Mexican military couldn't go), so Stephen Austin, the first of the authorized _empresarios,_ organized militia bands and cleaned out the bad ones, or furnished escort for incoming groups. From these militias had arisen the Rangers, and since the second war with Mexico their fame had spread even to the States. They were Indian fighters too, but all Texans were Indian fighters, or had the prospect of being so; technically, first of all, they were peace officers, charged with protecting white settlers from the lawless members of their own society, and if they couldn't always do that, with bringing the offenders to justice.

It didn't occur to Jess—not as a serious possibility—that he might himself join the Rangers. First off, even if he tried to, they'd probably tell him he was too young. And if they didn't, or if he was able to bluff them into believing he wasn't, he still might not be free to pursue the men he wanted; he'd be an officer of Texas law, and he'd have to go where his captain told him to—which might not be after the Bannisters.

No, it would be better to act as a private citizen. Everybody knew what the Bannisters were; nobody would miss them much, or be inclined to make trouble for the man who relieved the state of their presence.

He had to try, anyhow.

He saw it, now, at last. Trying—that was what a man did, and kept doing until he couldn't any more. He didn't like the idea of leaving Francie and Johnny to batten off the Bradys' charity, yet he knew that he could; that they'd be safe and well cared for. The Rangers might or might not be able to find the Bannisters—they had other obligations.

He didn't.

It was up to him. Probably nobody now alive in Texas had suffered so badly from the Bannisters as he had, yet been left to tell the tale of it. It was his right, his duty, his obligation.

It hurt to think of leaving his brother and sister behind. He didn't entirely want to. But this wasn't about wanting, he realized. Wanting had been taken out of the picture in the moment the first torch shattered the unprotected window glass and sent the flames racing up the curtains and along the tinder-dry floor planks. A man didn't get to choose. He did what he had to.

_Had_ to. Not _wanted_ to.

That was what made a man, he reckoned. If all you ever did was what you wanted to, you'd never grow up. Only children thought they could go through life doing just what they wanted.

Grown-ups knew better.

And in that moment, with that understanding, Jess Harper, aged fifteen and a quarter, grew up.

**SR**

He broke the news to them the next morning. As the platters of fried eggs and slab bacon were being passed around, he said, "I done made up my mind to somethin' last night. I'll be leavin', soon as I can."

Mrs. Brady froze with the egg platter extended halfway to Johnny, who sat next to her, and he saw her eyes flash to the other end of the table, to her husband. "Leaving?" Mr. Brady repeated. "To look for work, you mean?"

"You don't have to do that, Jess," his wife added quickly. "You're welcome here as our guest for as long as you want to stay. And Mr. Brady and I were talking, just a week or so ago, about ways that you and Francie and Johnny could set up a household of your own..."

Remembering what he'd heard, he had some notion of what it cost her to say that. And, for a moment, he was tempted to follow the lead Mr. Brady had tossed him. He was, after all, legally underage. If he said he was going to go off cowboying, nobody'd expect to see or hear much of him till fall; it would give him at least three or four good months' start.

But he couldn't do that. They'd taken him in, treated him like one of their own, and Francie and Johnny too. Lying to them about what he planned... that wouldn't be a right return for their generosity and kindness. They weren't _his_ family, but they'd done their best. The least he could do was be honest. Pa had always said lying wasn't like a man.

"No," he said, "that ain't—I can't do that. I got to get after Bannister. He's got three months on me as it is."

Johnny barely grabbed the platter away before Mrs. Brady could drop it on the floor; she'd gone pale. Edith and Neville were staring at Jess in awe; Harriet looked scarcely less stunned than her mother. Milt and Mr. Brady traded glances that said they weren't surprised; Gil, just across the table from him, appeared almost eager. Only baby Augusta, in her high chair, who was too little to understand what was going on, and Francie, between Gil and Edith, took the news without visible emotion.

"Jess," Mr. Brady said carefully, after a moment, "I know you feel you have a... a duty to your family. But Bannister's a wolf—he's been at this business almost as long as you've been alive. Professionals should be left to professionals. Let the Rangers handle him."

"I got a lot of respect for the Rangers, Mr. Brady," Jess said quietly. "My uncle was one—you know that. But they got a lot on their plates, with Indians, and stock thieves, and stage and express robbers, and Mexican bandits comin' across the Rio. Bannister's the worst of a bad lot, maybe, but he ain't... he ain't no more important to them than most of them others. And I'm a man now. It's my job." He didn't say anything about his feelings of guilt. Jess might be only fifteen, but he knew something about grown-ups, especially women; they'd try to distract him by persuading him that he had nothing to feel guilty about, that he'd had no way to know who—what—he was dealing with, that he'd done the best he could with the information he had.

And he couldn't afford to be distracted. He'd made up his mind. He knew what he had to do.

So, apparently, did Mr. Brady; well, he was a Texan too. "I don't figure we can really stop you," he said. "You're too old to lock in a bedroom—and a person should never be punished for doing what he thinks is right, anyhow. What will you do for an outfit?"

"I got a horse, a saddle and bridle and blanket, saddlebags, a couple of bed blankets, and my Navy sixgun. I been thinkin'... Wind Vane'll be owin' Pa half a year's pay, or almost, come next fall, and I reckon I'll be due a share of that, same as Francie and Johnny will. I was thinkin' maybe you and Mr. Graves would take my promise, and outfit me against that money..."

"He can have my rifle, Pa," said Milt. It was an old Colt Ring-Trigger Revolving Rifle, dating back to the first days of the Republic, and like all its kind, it was neither comfortable nor entirely safe to shoot: the user, whose left arm and hand were well out in front of the cylinder as they supported the weight of the barrel, could hardly escape having them scorched or stung by stray grains of powder or flying bits of copper from the bursting caps; hot gases, flashing out between cylinder and barrel, could hurt the face and eyes, which were only inches away, and sometimes a chainfire blew the whole hand off. But it carried more rounds than any long gun except the new Volcanics and Henrys, which were both rare and expensive in Texas, and had a longer range than any sidearm.

"I can't take your gun, Milt," Jess objected.

"No, Jess, he's right, you'll need one," Mr. Brady declared, "and it's time he had a new one anyway, being past eighteen; I can take it out of the store stock at wholesale. You'll want a tarp to wrap around your bedroll; I've got one I use when I'm duck-hunting in the winter, and a cut-down buffalo robe—it's old and starting to shed a little, but it should be good for a couple more seasons at least. That, with your blankets, will give you a good bed. You ought to have a rough-shoeing kit—hammer, pincers, file, a handful of nails, a couple of good-enoughs, in case your horse throws a shoe—and some fishhooks and line, trigger pins and snare lines, and what you'll need to clean and repair your guns and mold bullets; I can get all that together as soon as Milt and I open the store."

"Don't forget a cup and plate, Vernon," said Mrs. Brady firmly, "and a butcher knife, and a fork and spoon, and a Number Seven skillet and a saucepan with a lid. I can find a couple of empty cans he can use to boil his coffee and such."

"A slicker," said Harriet, "or a waterproof poncho. And a canteen or a water bag."

"A lariat," Gil added, "and a stake rope. And he can have my Bowie knife."

"Yes, and some of your clothes too, Gil," his mother said. "You're six months younger, but the two of you are just about of a size. Of course they're hand-me-downs, Jess, they were Milt's first, but they've still got some life left in them. And you'll need a bar of soap, and food, and matches, and a flint and steel in case you run out of them or they get wet..."

Jess allowed himself to breathe again. They weren't going to try to stop him, after all.

**SR**

After breakfast he excused himself to go out to the barn and check his saddle and gear over; if his cinch was starting to wear, or a buckle working loose, he wanted to know about it _now,_ not out on the trail somewhere. He wasn't entirely surprised when Johnny followed him. Johnny was twelve and, like himself, had been riding since he was strong enough to sit up in a saddle on his own and shooting since he was big enough to keep two ends of a rifle or shotgun off the ground; he'd never quite taken to horsebreaking or tracking as Jess had, but then Jess had been Jack Henry's favorite pupil, and maybe he'd gotten a bit more attention from the boss wrangler. He stood just a couple of inches under five feet and weighed ninety-eight pounds, but apart from that size difference, anyone who looked at the two of them side by side could see they were brothers. They had the same vivid dark-blue eyes, the same matte-black hair which sometimes took on a dark-brown cast in strong lamplight, the same deep wave to the forelock, the same lean cast to the features (though Johnny's still had a slightly unfinished look, as was natural for a boy his age), the same high-cut cheekbones and tapered, strongly-marked jaw (Johnny's beginning now to show more sharpness and angularity, and his chin too, as his face lost the roundness of childhood), the same straight thin nose, the same dimples that showed when they smiled, the same mobile mouth and expressive, oddly angled eyebrows. And in his walk, in the way he stood and sat a saddle, the way he moved, the way he held his head and used his hands, Johnny consciously patterned himself after Jess, copying the only big brother he could really remember.

Johnny was very bright, brighter than Jess or even Francie, who of all the young Harpers had taken most readily to book-learning; eternally curious and a born explorer, though not much for reading, not as Francie was. He was also wild and willful—not cruel, not thoughtless, but deeply resentful of the choices and circumstances that had put the Harpers into the situation that was the only life he'd ever known; it was as if he knew, even better than Jess did, that there were other options, better ways, but didn't quite know how to change things, and therefore was inclined to take out his resentment on his environment and, perhaps especially, his father, whose family reputation had led to his elopement with Ma and, ultimately, to Wind Vane. He chafed at the loneliness of his boyhood, at discipline, at chores; only when he was out riding or hunting or fishing did he seem to feel the kind of innocent joy that youngsters were supposed to. His anger and sullenness hung about him like a thin mist, giving his handsome face an older look; if not for his size he could easily have been taken for Jess's age, or even more. Yet he had loved his younger siblings, if not perhaps with the intensity that Jess—for almost ten years the oldest of the boys—had; he'd even, sometimes, when something distracted him long enough to forget his discontent, seemed to have a kind of fondness for Sam. He worshipped his big brother and had said more than once that all he wanted, when he grew up, was to "be just like Jess." And he was Southern through and through; the obligations of "blood" loomed large in his value system.

"You're gonna kill that Bannister, ain't you, Jess?" he said.

"Yeah, Johnny." Jess had never lied to his kid brother, and he didn't intend to start now, when they might not see each other for a long time to come. "I'm gonna kill him, if I can find him. It's what I owe to Pa and the littl'uns."

"I wanna go with you!" cried Johnny. "I can help you, Jess! I'm as old as you was when you started packin' a gun, so why ain't I old enough to help you hunt down them Bannisters? I'm a Harper too, ain't I? Pa and Billy and Davy and Julie was my family as much as yours, wasn't they?"

"They was, and you are," Jess told him. "Don't you never let nobody tell you otherwise. But just bein' the age I was when I strapped on a sixgun ain't the same thing. You ain't started doin' it yet. You'd have to learn to use it, and I'd have to watch out for you as well as me, and that could get both of us killed, maybe. Better you stay here." When Johnny opened his mouth to protest: "No, now you listen to me. Don't you reckon somebody's got to look after Francie? You'll be the last Harper man at home. That'll be your job."

Johnny looked up at him with tears in his eyes. "When I'm older—when I've learned to use a gun—then can I come with you? Then can I help?"

"I tell you what," Jess proposed. "When you're as old as me—when you're fifteen—Francie'll be close on twenty, and likely married up. She'll have a husband to look after her then, same's Miz Brady does. She won't need you to do it no more. Then you can come with me. But first you got to get a gun and learn to use it, just like I done. One of them new 1859 Model New Haven Navies, the kind that carries ten shots, that costs eighteen dollars. .36-caliber bullets for it is a dollar-twenty for a hundred, best-grade powder's forty cents a pound, and caps, well, they vary some. Gunbelt with a holster is two, maybe two and a half dollars. If you was to take twenty-four summer coyote pelts, six bits each one, you could buy a Navy of your own. Take a deer hide now and again, they're four bits up to a dollar, you could do it faster. Then you go to work helpin' the blacksmith, that's good for four bits a day, so's you can buy your own bullets and caps and powder. Then you could practice, same as I done when I was your age. You promise me—you give me your word for it—that you'll do that, and I'll come back when you're fifteen and we'll go together. You'll need a horse and an outfit, but I'll see to that." He'd talk to Mr. Brady about putting aside a share of Johnny's inheritance from Pa's money—or maybe of his own. Wind Vane bought all its supplies in Amarillo, so Mr. Dircks, who owned the place, knew the Bradys and dealt with them regularly; Mr. Brady could talk to him, when he came up from the Brazos in the fall and stopped in to settle the bill, about Pa's pay. He'd be likelier to listen to another grown man than he would to Jess, even if Jess could spare the time to swing by his main place and discuss the matter with him.

Johnny took a deep breath and dragged his sleeve across his face, his young features firming as he recognized the responsibility his hero-brother was offering him. "I'll do it, Jess. I give you my word."

"That's good. I was plumb sure I could count on you, Johnny." Jess extended his hand, and they shook on it.

**SR**

He sat on the back porch in the fading afternoon light, packing his gear while he waited to be called to supper. The Bradys had done well by him. A sixty-foot hard-plaited Manilla lariat, brand-new, cut from the huge coil of half-inch "whale line" in the store, with a honda spliced in. A canvas nosebag for his horse, currybrush, thirty-foot stake rope and picket peg. A five-gallon canvas water bag that would fold flat when not in use, and a two-gallon canteen for everyday. A St. Paul canvas slicker with a heavy blanket lining. Milt's old Colt rifle, and a boot of heavy saddle leather to carry it in. A folding brass telescope in a small tubular leather case, to which Mr. Brady had rigged a strap so it could be slung from the saddle horn, to be easy to reach quickly. Four boxes of ammunition, two of .36-caliber for his Navy, two of .69 for the rifle, and as many of caps; an eight-ounce metal powder flask with a spring top and a wreath-and-deer pattern, and two pounds of top-grade powder in a tightly sealed can. A collapsible tin camp oven, a small lard can to boil his coffee in, a couple of small skillets and a little saucepan, a nine-by-six-inch wire broiler, a spit, one-pint tin cup, deep-rimmed tin plate, spoon, fork, butcher knife. String and thong, an awl, plenty of six-foot rawhide piggin strings. A whetstone for his knives, a tightly corked bottle of matches, a flint and steel, bottle of tinder pre-soaked with kerosene in case everything around him was wet, rough-shoeing gear, gun-cleaning kit, bar lead, reloading set with two bullet molds; fishhooks and line, snare lines, six small steel trigger pins; a spare cinch. A little sewing kit so he could darn his socks or patch his longjohns at need—that had been Harriet's idea. A wooden comb, a bar of soap in a little enamel box, a towel. A short-handled camp ax. A three-foot triangle of canvas with six grommets, one at each corner and one in the middle of each edge, which could be rigged in half a dozen ways as a windbreak or rain-roof, or just rolled and shoved under his head as an extra pillow. Two extra shirts, as many sets of underwear, three pair of socks and a spare pair of pants; an old blanket-lined canvas jacket, a home-knit gray sweater, a pair of fringed shotgun leggings, a pair of buckskin gloves. More gear than he'd ever had in his life, though not more clothes—four shirts and three pair of pants had always been Ma's idea of the absolute minimum a properly-equipped man should have, not counting his "best." And in the morning he'd get his grub. His rope, like all new Manilla ropes, had been stiff as wire, so he'd fastened a chain to one end of it, attached chain and rope to a couple of the Bradys' fence-posts, twisted with a bar in a link of the chain till the contraption was tight, and left it that way for a couple of days; when he took it down the rope was stretched and supple, needing only a little conditioning with tallow and paraffin. He'd checked his saddle and bridle over minutely, taken his pony down to be re-shod. He was about as ready as he'd ever be, he reckoned.

He packed the towel and clothes inside his oilskin war bag, wrapped his blankets around it, then the buffalo robe and the tarp, and tied the whole thing with a couple of thongs. Fitted the small items into his saddlebags like the pieces of a puzzle-ball. Filled his cap case, bullet pouch, and powder flask, tested the edge of Gil's knife and tucked it into the sheath he'd contrived in the top of his right boot. Coiled the stake rope, tying one end through the ring at the head of the peg with a permanent knot. And stopped, just before putting it aside, as he heard the door open and close behind him. Didn't turn. He knew who was there.

He had always been closest to Johnny, of all his siblings; but between him and Francie there was a special kind of bond, perhaps because they were closer in age—only twenty-one months—than any other pair in the family. They knew each other, they could read each other, sense things about each other, as he'd done that day in the kitchen when they'd talked about Johnny and the diggings around Denver.

She'd always been kind of the runt of the Harper litter: at not-quite-seventeen she was still only five feet two, under 130 pounds, and as flat-chested as himself in her red-and-blue printed calico. She took after Pa in her coloring, like Jake and Davy and Julie, where he and Johnny and Sophie, Ben and Billy, had favored the Coopers: fair skin, cinnamony-brown hair with a hint of reddish cast, hazel eyes that got a green sparkle in them when she was happy. She wasn't what you'd call pretty, but she wasn't plain either: good features, clean and lively when she wasn't tired or worried; a bright smile that lit her whole face.

"I ain't stayin', Francie," he said quietly, not looking around. "I can't stay. You know I can't."

He saw her, out of the side of his eye, settling down on the step beside him; he kept his gaze trained across the yard, to the Bradys' barn. "I know you can't," she said, her voice equally as even as his own. "I've known since... since it happened. You're the oldest Harper boy still at home; of course you'd see it as your duty. I've known you'd go; you didn't have to say it."

He remembered how emotionlessly she'd taken his news at breakfast the other day. Like she'd just been waiting for him to say it out loud; like she'd long since done any grieving the news might cause. "Pa always told me, there's things men know, and things women know," he said— "most of the trouble between 'em is that neither one can understand the other's knowin'. A man's got to live with himself, Francie, all his life, and that's hard for a woman to see, on account of she ain't got the... obligations he does, to his family, to his work, to his name." He took a deep breath. "I been all over it in my mind, up and down, sideways and inside out, and this is... it's what I got to do. Pa, he made a choice, and it was his, but the littl'uns... they died on account of a choice _I_ made. I know can't nothin' bring 'em back, or make 'em happier'n they are; they're with Ma and Pa now, but... they shouldn't oughtta had to die like that, nor so young. I... I got to balance the scales, Francie. Could be I'm the only one that can, on account of so many folks ain't lived through a Bannister raid; I still ain't plumb sure how we done it, you and me and Johnny. I reckon... maybe God's give me this job to do. Maybe that's why we was let to live, Francie—so I could put a stop to him. I know that sounds—kind of vain, but it ain't how I meant it. It's just... what I feel."

"And Ma always told me," said Francie, "that whatever a body feels is true for him, and that there ain't ever anything wrong with feelings; that they're what they are. That what matters is what you do about 'em."

"They was pretty wise, our folks, wasn't they?" he said.

"I reckon so," she agreed. "I reckon we was lucky to be born to them, and not to any of them other Harpers."

"I reckon," he suggested, "that maybe that's another reason I got to do this. It's... a thanks-offering, like you read about in the Bible. Like Abraham and Isaac, a little bit."

"I reckon the world can sure spare them Bannisters," she said, her lips tight, and for just an instant he got a hint of what she might have been like if she'd been born a boy. Then: "But you'll fight 'em fair, Jess? Won't you?"

"Fair as I can," he promised, " 'cause if I don't, that'll make me no better'n them."

"We'll be waitin' for you, Johnny and me," she said. "You know that."

"I know that. And if I can get this job done, I'll be back. There's still Colorado."

"A fresh start, like you said," she observed, "in a Territory where nobody's heard of the Texas Harpers or cares about 'em. That'd be good."

Their eyes met, blue and hazel. "You take care of yourself, li'l sis."

"And you watch your back, little brother."

They hugged without getting up, two very young Texans who'd had to grow up early and suddenly; it was both promise and private goodbye.

**SR**

Jess took the saddlebags that Johnny passed him, then the bedroll, tying them carefully in place behind the cantle. Slipped the camp ax through a ring on the skirt, hung the coiled stake rope on the pommel, the canteen and telescope over the horn, slung his chaps across behind them, tied the slicker in place with a slipknot so he could get it loose in a hurry if a sudden rainstorm blew up. Squatted down on his heels for a private eye-to-eye moment with his brother. "Now, Johnny," he said in his firmest voice, "I know you give me your word to somethin' already, and I took it. But there's somethin' else I need you to agree to. You and me and Francie are all that's left of our family, 'less I can get a line on Ben and Jake, and that ain't likely after nine years. So we got to pull together the best we can. I know you got the Harper temper same as me, and I know you ain't fond of mindin', but you got to do it all the same. While I'm gone, it's your job to protect Francie, like I told you, but you got to remember, too, that she's near five years older'n you and knows more. So you got to not give her no more trouble than you can help, okay? You and her, you gotta be a team. Remember it's always been Harpers against the world. And hold it in mind you're a guest in the Bradys' house, and you got to mind your carefulness, like Ma used to say. You keep a civil tongue, all right?"

The boy struggled visibly, but his worship of his big brother won out in the end, as Jess had hoped it would. "It won't be easy, Jess. But I'll try."

Jess nodded. "Tryin' is what a man does, and keeps doin' till he can't no more," he said, out of his epiphany on the back porch. " 'Long as I know you're tryin', that'll be enough for me." He held out his hand, and again they shook. Then: "Come on, they're all waitin' on us."

Johnny walked beside him as he led his buckskin out of the barn, around the side of the house to the front gate, where Francie and the Bradys were standing. Mrs. Brady handed him a flour sack encased in a heavier burlap one, both tied shut with leather whang lacing. "There's flour and sugar and salt in here," she said, "coffee, cornmeal, half a side of bacon, canned milk and tomatoes, beans, a roll of jerked beef, some pepper and a bottle of sourdough—mind you freshen it every time you take some out—and some dried corn and apricots. And six fresh apples, and two small jars of honey, and a dozen eggs cracked and stored in a jar—you can rob prairie-hen nests too, you know—and some of my wild-plum jelly and pear chip preserves, and sugar muffins, shortcake and gingersnaps, and what's left of the poundcake from last night, and some gingerbread." There were tears in her eyes. "I wish I could give you—I wish you could carry—more."

"It's more'n I'd have asked for, and I thank you, ma'am," he said, and took the bundle from her hands and tied it firmly in place on the pommel. Shook hands with Gil, with Milt, with Mr. Brady; gave Neville and Edith and little Augusta, perched in the crook of Harriet's arm, each a kiss as he would have his own lost littl'uns. Pulled Johnny to him and held him a long minute, let him go and shook hands again. Settled his holster at his side, mounted with the Indian-style hop Jack Henry had taught him, made sure the old Colt rifle was secure in its boot and his knife alongside his knee. Exchanged one last, long, speaking look with Francie, and twitched the reins. The well-trained buckskin moved easily forward and away, turning south down the Sunday-quiet street.

"Good luck, Jess!" "Write to us!" "We'll be waiting." "You'll always be welcome here." "Don't forget us!"

He didn't look back.

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**Note:** In "Deadly is the Night," Matt Dyer (played by Lloyd Nolan), who's at least 40 if not older, tells of having grown up in Tascosa, and in "The Betrayers" Kett Darby (Adam West) mentions the time he and Jess wrecked a _cantina_ in Amarillo. This tells us that in the _Laramie_ version of reality, these two towns (which in our history weren't founded until after Col. Ranald Mackenzie cleaned out the Comanches in 1874) existed earlier—possibly _much_ earlier, before the Civil War. And, of course, Jess as early as First Season establishes that he was brought up in the Panhandle country, on a "big ranch" where his parents "worked shares." (This is not the same thing as sharecropping; it refers to the custom of taking a percentage of the profits in return for one's labors, and is still resorted to today, with large dairy farms being one popular venue for it.) So I invented the history as given in the opening paragraphs to account for the presence of ranches and towns in that "Injun country." The official Mexican recognition of _Anglo_ Indian-fighting prowess, the long history of the Rangers, and Texas's retention of her public lands are all true. And even east of the Mississippi, white "squatters" were filtering into Indian lands long before they had any official sanction to do so. The Proclamation of 1775, which forbade white settlement west of the Appalachians, was quickly made a dead letter: traders and fur trappers paid it no heed from the beginning, and though no settler crossing the line could expect military protection or security in his lands, such settlements as Harrodsburg, Boonesboro, and Wheeling were established in blithe defiance of it, and never threatened with removal—and this in a country rich in cover (unlike the Panhandle) where the Indians sometimes displayed a siege mentality, as Pontiac's campaign and the Battle of Boonesborough demonstrate. After independence, the pattern persisted, with the squatter often filtering onto Indian land before the tribesmen's right to it had been extinguished (or even modified) by treaty, and therefore frequently exciting their ire and taking the brunt of their resentment. Thus it seemed entirely possible that Texans could have done likewise.

The Harpers' house is actually based on a real (if vacant!) house about a mile from my apartment—and the original _does_ look like an oblong, even though I've paced it out several times, and it's definitely a square!


End file.
